Ripped off by a pool?

[Raulo]

pools == get payed for the work you do. you will get payed, guaranteed
standalone == get a tiny chance to get payed

A small chance, yes, but to get paid much more.

I agree that pooled mining is more predictable and less random. But from the mathematical point of view, the average expected payout is exactly the same regardless of assumptions about hashspeed and growth rate.

If you like a constant stream of micropayments, pooled mining is for you. If you prefer the thrill of getting a block by yourself, do it the standalone way.

Standalone is like betting on a roulette. Except there is no casino that takes its cut. All the winning are distributed fairly. The thrill of gambling for just the cost of electricity

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[BitLex]

i can see your point, although i don't really get it.

on one hand you say, you get a chance to get paid much more,
on the other hand you say, from the mathematical point of view, the average expected payout is exactly the same.

what is it now, much more, or exactly the same?
obviously it's the same, the bad side of standalone-mining (at least for low-power-contributors) is,
that you risk to lose it all and get nothing in the end.
in the pool you get the same payout, in form of micropayments, but without the risk to lose it.

except for the thrill, there's nothing to win in standalone-mining, but a few coins to lose.

anyway, as long as you push power to the network, no matter how tiny it is, no matter if pooled or not,
you'll help make our system stronger.

happy crunching. 

[Mahkul]

As of now, it seems easy to lie about the number of total work units required to solve a block. There is nothing to prevent the pool operator to open a few accounts and attributing some modest number of work to those accounts, increasing the number of total work units required, and dividing the 50BTC proportionally amongst all accounts, including his dummy accounts. With enough blocks, he can snag quite a sum of money. Honest clients will see that their work units are being properly accounted, but they can never see that their effort is being diluted by the operator.

Do you really think if slush was retaining a percentage of the earned bitcoins for himself people would stop using the pool? I mean officially retaining, of course.

I'll wager that if I have thought of this, somebody else has already implemented it.

There is this quote by George Bernard Shaw: "A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

[slush]

but without the risk to lose it.

Yes, you can be scammed. I absolutely accept that people does not trust pool operator. It is their freedom of choice and Bitcoin is about freedom. I made pooled service with rising difficulty on mind, because I'd like to return my investment to mining hardware. Those periodic micropayments are lowering my own personal risk which I put in bitcoin idea. There were a days when I did not find a block even with strongest GPU on the market, which personally made me uncomfortable.

[gene]

As of now, it seems easy to lie about the number of total work units required to solve a block. There is nothing to prevent the pool operator to open a few accounts and attributing some modest number of work to those accounts, increasing the number of total work units required, and dividing the 50BTC proportionally amongst all accounts, including his dummy accounts. With enough blocks, he can snag quite a sum of money. Honest clients will see that their work units are being properly accounted, but they can never see that their effort is being diluted by the operator.

Do you really think if slush was retaining a percentage of the earned bitcoins for himself people would stop using the pool? I mean officially retaining, of course.

So it isn't worth discussing? I thought this was a technical forum.

There is this quote by George Bernard Shaw: "A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it."

I'm cautiously optimistic, but I know that the wild-west atmosphere that will soon surround this emerging technology is going to nourish some nasty characters. Guaranteed.

Sheep go with the group and don't ask hard questions. Sheep then get slaughtered.

If this early adoption cohort takes things seriously, then bitcoin might have a chance to change the world. If not, well... things like this don't always get second chances to succeed. Powerful people are watching this closely and are looking for cracks.

[BitLex]

Yes, you can be scammed.

of course you can be scammed, you'll always need to trust a pool-admin.

but i wasn't talking about greedy, dishonest people,
just about the advantage of pooled mining, expecting an honest admin.

almost anyone seems to trust the admins of MyBitcoin, MtGox, or other services,
which hold a lot more coins than any of the (2) pools we've seen so far ever generated.
why not trust a pool-admin the same way?
at least give him a few days of "trust in advance", so he can get everything sorted and the system running.

the topic starter doesn't and still calls himself optimistic.
 

[gene]

Yes, you can be scammed.

of course you can be scammed, you'll always need to trust a pool-admin.

but i wasn't talking about greedy, dishonest people,
just about the advantage of pooled mining, expecting an honest admin.

almost anyone seems to trust the admins of MyBitcoin, MtGox, or other services,
which hold a lot more coins than any of the (2) pools we've seen so far ever generated.
why not trust a pool-admin the same way?
at least give him a few days of "trust in advance", so he can get everything sorted and the system running.

the topic starter doesn't and still calls himself optimistic.
 

I called myself cautiously optimistic. The qualifier is crucial. I don't see how useful it is to assume honest actors; this is not the case that matters. The trust models that are currently being used by this community will not scale. The time to tackle these issues is now, not later.

[Mahkul]

I joined the mining pool yesterday evening. Today I received 2.47 BTC. That's actually pretty quick.

[mico]

Is there any difference in pools by it's type? E.g. I'm using CPU mining client and it shows me 52553 khash/s with 40 clients now. Are GPU-clients mininng on another pool instance on the server?

[slush]

Is there any difference in pools by it's type? E.g. I'm using CPU mining client and it shows me 52553 khash/s with 40 clients now. Are GPU-clients mininng on another pool instance on the server?

You joined another pool.